isfied,-in Lucan, contempt,-in Tacitus, despair. But if we turn to the book of any modern infidel, we shall find a morality, before which Socrates would have bowed himself like a child, hopes which would have illuminated the gloomy dreams of Eschylus,-and faith which would have cheered and gladdened the majestic spirit of Plato. Christianity is not only the fountain of all our hopes, she is also the guide of all our science, and the inspiration of all our art. The great fathers of modern philosophy, Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Kant, were devout men, and all anxious to promote human science with a view to the glory of their God. The chisel of Michael Angelo exerted its noblest efforts on the revelation of Mount Sinai, and Raphael esteemed no subjects worthy of his pencil but the virgin majesty of Mary, or the kindness, the sufferings, and the glories, of his Redeemer. Christianity kindled the genius of De Castro, Fenelon, Klopstock, and Tasso; and the spirit of the Gospel was the muse of Milton. Mankind have become weaned from their old predilection for outward achievements, and devoted with ever increasing interest to subjects of internal feeling and spiritual import. Eternity has been revealed to us, and we are compelled to look on the present as a mere point of nothingness. We rest contented with no earthly conclusions; in all music, in all poetry, and in all philosophy, we require to have a glimpse beyond the grave. We are permitted to gaze on the great tragedy of human life, which has creation for its commencement, angels and demons for its machinery, -the passions of men for its actors, and judgment for its catastrophe ;-and it is no wonder that we have lost our relish for all meaner dramas. Religion is the prevailing spirit of the age. The Messenger of God has weapons in his hand to which we are not disposed to offer any resistance; let bim use them firmly but gently, and he shall make willing captives of us all. The world has already seen many periods in which the paramount influ ence on the minds of men, has been that exerted by the ministers of our religion. Such was the age of Augustine, who turned the best arms of the Greeks against themselves, and by the profoundness of his reasonings, no less than by the vigour of his eloquence, demolished the cause of heathenism among the nations of the west. Such, too, in latter times, was the age of Bossuet, Pascal, and Massillon, who contended with successful mastery against the pernicious paradoxes of Des Cartes, and the incipient spirit of infidelity. Had France been so happy as to possess a series of worthy successors to these illustrious men, what miseries and degradations might she not have been spared? But no sooner were they laid in their graves, than scepticism gained courage, and began to walk triumphantly abroad. Those stern and awful voices, which had stilled the babbling of the scoffer, and supported the skrinking courage of the feeble believer, were now mute, and the adversaries of our faith proceeded, unchecked, in their career. The champions of religion themselves, became cold and fainthearted; they could not brook the en. vious ridicule that was heaped upon their cause and upon themselves,and they gave up the strongest of their fastnesses, and laid aside the most celestial weapons of their armoury,in the vain hope of conciliating the favour or forbearance of a treacherous, insatiate, and exulting enemy. Every noble association was by degrees destroyed, every pure and simple feeling debased, every lofty principle eradicated,—and all the generous chivalry of France forgotten ;-the consequences of irreligion have been written in characters of fear, in the corrupted heartlessness of domestic manners, and the most profligate and blood-stained of political revolutions. We may thank other things than accident, that the ministers of religion in this country have not to contend with the same obstacles which meet their brethren in France. The habitual dispositions of the British people are not frivolous and unthinking, but sober, airnest, and devout. Our veneration VOL. 6.] Pulpit Eloquence-Dr. Chalmers. 57 for the institutions of our fathers has in our hearts. We perceive, indeed, that he has the voice and the authority of a prophet, but we never forget that he has also the sympathies and fellow-feelings of a man. not been shaken by any convulsions of democracy, our antique associations preserve all their force, the throne and the altar are still viewed by us with unbroken affection, and we look back with pride and reverence to a long line of manly and pious ancestors. The spirit of religion is mingled with our earliest visions of innocent enjoyment; our first indelible impressions of maternal tenderness and fatherly concern are entwined with ideas of Christian meekness, charity, and love,-with the memory of simple prayers and the evening sacrifice of psalms. He among us that throws aside his Christianity, breaks in sunder the chords that should lie nearest to his heart, and infuses the coldness of indifference, or, it may be, the bitterness of remorse into that cup of solitary meditation which should overflow with intermingled melancholy, softness, and delight.—A spirit such as that ofChalmers, would feel itself strangely out of place under the gilded canopy of a Parisian pulpit. But it is a compliment to our nation, that with us he is at home. He is the symbol of directness and and simplicity,-be unites his power of imagination, his profoundness of reason, bis majesty of eloquence, with affections as uncorrupted, and feelings as tender, as dwell within the pure and angelic bosom of an infant. He bas surveyed mankind in all their conditions, he has scrutinized all the mazes of their passions and their guilt, but he has done this from the holy pinnacle of the temple, and no spot of human vanity or presumption has been allowed to mingle itself with his soul. He has the art to make us listen to him with all the reverence which is due to a superior being, without taking away from the intimacy of that affection which binds us to natures like our own. We look up to him as to a father, or an elder brother, with an awe that is tempered with kindness, and an admiration that is stained by no lurking poison of envy. He produces at once the highest enjoyment in our infellect, and the most soothing calm with H ATHENEUM VOL. 6. ings, his philosophy, his genius, he We might take from him his reasonwould still be the most engaging of all orators, could he only retain that impassioned freedom which gives vent to the mild and heavenly feelings wherewith his bosom overflows. In this age of suspicion, mistrust, and mockery, most men are afraid of being ridiculed, should they unfold their inmost emotions, and retain, buried within the recesses of their hearts, nay, not unfrequently disguise, under an external veil of coldness and apathy, that genuine and melting tenderness, and that hallowed enthusiasm, which form in the eye of God, and whenever they are made manifest, in the opinion of all good men, the best counter-balance to that weight of infirmity and sin, whereof the great mass of every human character is composed. The error has not only gone abroad among the common walks of life, it has crept into the senatehouse and the sanctuary; it has banished all the fire of patriotism from the speeches of the statesman, and not a little of the fervency of devotion from the more solemn oratory of the priests. But Chalmers is too sensible of the dignity of his genius, to truckle to these base and chilling observances originally invented by the cold and calculating infidel, although adopted by not a few among the sincerest of his brethren. He knows that he is the messenger of God to man; he knows that he would be unfaithful to his master should he leave behind him the most piercing of his weapons when he the battle. He will not consent to conceal forth into goes that which is in itself noble, out of a regard to prejudices that are mean. His own heart and the gospel are both creations of his God, and, "being things so majestical," he will not "offer them the least shew of violence." He throws himself upon us with the fearless dignity of inspiration, and his voice awakens a sleeping echo in every human soul on which it comes. which we have all our lives been accustomed, begin to start one by one into a new state of brightness and vigour. In every step of his progress, he seems to dissolve, by the touch of his magic wand, that stony sleep of lethargy in which some noble feeling of our nature had for a season been entranced. He gives us no new arguments, no new images, but he scatters the vivid rays of poetic splendour over those which, by the very frequency of repetition, have ceased to have any power either upon our reason or our fancy. We are lost in a vague maze of wonder, how it should happen that all these things seemed so trivial to us before,-how arguments so convincing should have appeared weak, or images so appalling should have passed tamely and dimly before our eyes. He has at last gained the undisputed mastery, and we yield up our spirits that he may do with them according to his will. Our souls are quickened with a more vigorous sense of life; our heartstrings vibrate with unknown intensity of emotion. He carries our enthusiasm along with him in flights, whose loftiness we should not have dared to imagine. He plunges us into depths of contrition, from which he only could teach us to emerge, and shakes us over yawning abysses of despair, where his hand alone could preserve us from the last precipice of ruin. He melts us with love, kindles us with hope, or darkens us with horror. We feel as if we were in the grasp of some commanding angel, borne through all the untravelled fields of ether;-now wrapped in the black recesses ofthunder, now gliding through fleecy clouds of gold and amber, now floating majestically through the free and azure expanses of the untroubled Ere we have heard many sentences .sky. The stars begin to gleam upon of his sermon, we feel that we are in the us with a warmer lustre, earth lies far presence of a great man. A charm is below a dim and rolling orb, and our upon us at once awful and delightful. eyes begin to descry afar off the crystal We feel as if indeed born again,—as if battlements of heaven. We are wilin total forgetfulness of our own worth-ling to confess that we have never lived less individual selves, but belonging to a before, and would sacrifice ages of race of beings whose natures are imper- earthliness for one moment of a rapture fect, but whose destiny is glorious. Those so divine. old associations and impressions to When he commences the worship of his God, it ought to be acknowledged, that there is about him and around him an undescribable air of passionless constraint, that to the unthinking mind may appear like indifference or want of devotion. He reads the psalm with a tame and burried monotony,-and even in the prayer which follows, we scarcely feel that we are in the presence of Chalmers. But in truth, this air of apathy is breathed from the struggling passions of his soul. Though the congregation know it not, he knows the awful, the sublime, the overpowering sanctities conceived within his spirit; be seems almost afraid of trusting himself with a glimpse of those conceptions which he is soon about to scatter like lightning around him ;-calm, still, and unmoved, as his aspect looks in the time of prayer, the waves are even then rising within his soul; we seem to hear afar off, as in the tranquillity of noon, the voice of the coming tempest; and the silence of the house of God, whispering with the weak voice of the preacher, is, to those who have heard Chalmers at the height of his elevation, awful, as some scene of nature, when the very rustling of the leaf gives forewarning of the thunder. It arises not from the weakness, but VOL. 6.] Pulpit Eloquence-Dr. Chalmers. the will, of Chalmers, that he very seldom keeps us long at the summit of this elevation. He seems to be insensible that the splendours which he has revealed to us are either new or dazzling. His genius regards the universe as its birthright, and, he has no undue partiality for the richer and more magnificent regions of his domain. With the same overpowering sweep of mastery, he brings us at once from the heaven to the earth, and from the earth to the heaven, and, however majestic may have been his elevation, he has not the air of feeling any degradation from his descent. He compels us indeed to follow his footsteps into the basest tracks of mortality, and lays open the infirmities, the frailties, the errors, the vileness, of our nature, with the keen indignation of a Juvenal, no less willingly than he has already inflamed and purified our spirits with the angelic enthusiasm of a Milton. But there is diffused over the humblest of his representations a redeeming breath ofChristian sublimity a thousand times more ennobling than all the stern and unbending dignities of the Porch. He does not, like the philosophers of old, confine all grandeur to contemplation; he clothes with majesty the most common offices of life, and teaches that the meanest of his christian hearers may exert, in the bosom of his family, and in the manly perseverance of painful labours, virtues more lofty and divine than were ever called up by the pure spirit of the Stagyrite, or ever floated among the mystical and foreboding dreams of Plato. These are the things which fill the walls of his church with crowds the most mingled, yet the most harmonious that were ever collected together for social enjoy ment or social good. It is this that makes the wise and the great come to have their souls fed like infants by the liberal hand of his genius, and makes the poor man and the ignorant steal from the precious moments of his weekday toil, that his spirit may be sustained and kindled by the inspiring voice of Chalmers. He is not the preacher of any one class; he is the common orator of man. 59 Were our hearts indeed as dead and as cold as monumental marble, they could not fail to sympathise with such a preacher. He has given up his soul to the full sway of his emotions, and he summons from the depths of a convulsed spirit things more awful, as well as more lovely, than could ever be dreamed of by the ordinary mind of man. We need only to look upon him, to see that his heart is bursting with the deluge of his zeal. His countenance glares with the feeling of unutterable things: his voice quivers, and his limbs tremble; and we perceive that he is in the agony of inspiration. It is in such an attitude of awful ecstacy that we represent to ourselves the Hebrew prophet, when "the heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God, being among the captives by the river of Chebar." It is to such a tone of solemn denunciation that earth shall listen, when "the angel shall come down, having great power, and crying mightily with a strong voice, Babylon the great is fallen !” Sometimes, when listening to his prophetic voice, the soul feels all at once chained and bound down to the contemplation of some one grand picture which he has unfolded to our imagination. For a while we are lost as in a dream, and the scene before us fades away from our eyes. We suddenly awake from our reverie, and, lifting our gaze to the pulpit, there is is the mighty preacher thundering before us: he seems to us, in his re-appearing effulgence, like a being sent from afar to comfort, to admonish, and to command; an Image of the dwellers in eternity seems there speaking to the children of time; and our hearts expand, as they thrill with the concentered hopes of immortality. If we could suppose a human creature so miserable as to dread the extinction of the soul within him, let him listen unto Chalmers speaking of death and of the grave, and he will feel himself prepared to pass through all the horrors of dissolution, as fearlessly as if on board a mighty ship, sailing in all her glory through some gulf of roaring darkness, into the azure bosom of everlasting calm. While Chalmers is preaching, a sublime effect is created by the universal harmony of sentiment spread over a breathless congregation. All who come within the empire of his soul are raised to the same level. Now the young are solemn as the old; now the old are impassioned as the young: the most ignorant are suddenly enlightened, the most callous penetrated, the most haughty humbled, the most humbled assured. All the artificial distinctions of society are lost and forgotten; he deals with the primary and eternal emotions of our nature; youth, beauty, health, riches, and worldly honours, are phantoms without a name. His utterance is of the secrets of the heart and the awfulness of judgment: our souls are stripped of their earthly garments, and we stand all alike wretched and sinful, but all alike resigned and hoping suppliants before the footstool of God, and beneath the gracious smile of a Redeemer. If we can spare a thought away from ourselves, let us but look around, and every breath is hushed, every cheek is pale, every eye is rivet ted. In the midst of all that multitude his voice is heard, like a mighty river rolling through the breathless solitude of nature; nor are the lifeless rocks and trees rooted in more motionless repose, than the thousands sitting there in the awe-struck stillness of pervading devotion. Truly the Sabbath-worship of our God is a sublime worship, when our souls are upheld in their aspirations heavenward by such a preacher. He teaches us to regard with still holier feelings that consecrated day; and we look forward with delight to the coming Sabbath, when our piety is to be again restored and strengthened. The stir of life is hushed in a great city: for one day the busy heart of man is at rest, and heaven is allowed its dominion over earth. The bells are tolling in the calm; a shoal of people flows on towards the house of God; and for a season no sound is in the city but the voice of the preacher or the singing of holy psalms. In that crowd there may be curiosity and idle thoughts, nay, even dark passions and evil spirits: such is the doom of our humanity. But one hour of perfect freedom from vice, from meanness, and from folly, is now given unto all. All are admitted into a dream and a vision of glory; and who shall say what blessed effects may remain, long after the voice of the preacher is silent? Awakened devotion that has slept for years-generous and gentle emotions deadened by the world's law-the long-lost innocence of childhood-the tenderness of youthful affections-the enthusiasm of youthful piety-the recollections of prayers uttered on bended knees-of the voice of dead parents who blessed our infancy-all that softens, beautifies, and sublimes humanity, returns upon our hearts like a gale from Paradise, and in that mood they are open to the tidings of salvation. It is not a vain and delusive enthusiasm; it is not a sudden swelling of human exultation; but it is a conviction sent in peace and rapture through our souls, that the heavens are the abode of more than brotherly-more than fatherly, love;—that awful eyes are looking on us with pity and compassion ;-that awful hands are stretched out to embrace us ;—and that it is in the power of all to secure everlasting bliss, by the holy, devout, submissive acknowledgment and acceptance of the promise of redemption. Let it not be said that such emotions must necessarily be transient. True, that they cannot continue in all their force. We are of this world, and its voice must be obeyed. But think not that the shower is dried up though it disappears. It falls upon the dry dust of our souls, and its influence is attested, at some future time, by flowers and verdure. Who is there so dull, so dead to the influence of ennobling thoughts, as not to love to recall the hours of passionate exaltation! The soul will revert to its triumphs; if waking cares will not permit, yet will we dream of them in our very sleep-sleeping or waking we are the children of Heaven |